Social Psychology

In this chapter, we investigate the recent situation concerning the seduction of consumers by advertising and the media. A new plethora of media-organised conglomerates is attempting to monopolise our attention and steer our emotions, opinions and choices towards increased consumption through imposed wants in the interest of gross profits for a semi-invisiblised few. Herein we consider: the colonisation of public places (advertising), the work/spend cycle, increased work at the cost of leisure; impression management, status-conscious and conspicuous consumption, reflective versus pre-reflective thinking in consumer choices, the early recruitment of children, how human emotions can become the fuel of overconsumption, class-based emotions and fashion consumption, obsessions with body image, the evasion and silencing of criticism by the corporate media. The approach is one founded in critical theory - a perspective that describes the individual as reciprocally constituted by the society in which she lives, rather than as a passive entity existing prior to socialisation. It seeks to reveal the seduction of our subjectivities (running marketing strategies ‘from within') as contrasted with the value-free, ‘objective' approach of much contemporary social psychology. Contemporary theoreticians in sociology and consumer studies, including Pierre Bourdieu and Juliet Schor, are cited along with deeper philosophical perspectives from the earlier philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, complete with references from contemporary books and journals.

Seduction and Surprise

The chapter explores the meaning of seduction from a situated approach to emotions by tracing the way surprise uncovers emotional traits that enable commitment. The adoption of a Situated Approach reveals how emotions are intrinsically tied to the situations from which they arise and the crucial role of surprise. The emotion of surprise is central for the value of experience because it amplifies other emotions as well as other traits, and details of the lived situations fixing the meaning of the lived experience. The examination of how various emotions belong to the family of surprise further explains the established differences between persuasion, manipulation and seduction. Ultimately the chapter shows that seduction asks for the recognition of various layers of emotional reality, and how they are made visible by the way in which seduction establishes commitments.

Seduction in Works of Art

What is it about certain things that occupy our thought until we get hold of them, until we somehow possess them? Why is it that we hopelessly, predictably, inevitably fall for certain works of art? What is it about certain objects that seduce us? This chapter seeks to study the seductiveness of objects, something that also preoccupied Jean Baudrillard and is found at the core of his thinking. The work studies a very particular kind of object: the work of art, although consumption and captology, designed objects and other types of objecthood are also used as examples. The perspective adopted here, however, is not related to the historical or economic contexts of the objects. The truth about seduction will not be sought (it would deceive, anyway); or, indeed, an interpretation for the purposes of academic knowledge, which would kill it; or, again, its representation, which would be a flawed and false undertaking, if not impossible.

On Seduction

Seduction is a sexual act, a sex instinct expression, a love practice, a body performance, a psychoanalytical problematic, a philosophical issue, a creative strategy full of phantasies from art to politics, from advertising to entertainment, from personal intimacy to mass-media. Seduction is basis of strip-tease profession, of course! But it is also a cultural metaphor. Seduction is an indispensable part of acting in performing arts. In cinema, actors and actress seduce spectators. In photography, photographer and photographed one, they seduce reciprocally. Seduction has very strong mythological origins. On the other hand, superman of Nietzsche, gaze of Bataille, objet petit a of Lacan are some adequate contemporary parameters to discuss the seduction concept. In this context, Le Samura? (1967) of Jean-Pierre Melville, Magic Mike (2012) of Steven Soderbergh, Jupiter Ascending (2015) of Lana and Andy (Lilly) Wachowski are our cinematographic examples. Eikoh Hosoe's project ‘Barakei' (1961), Duane Michals' project ‘Questions without Answers' (2001), Mehmet Turgut's self-portrait series (2000's) are our photographic examples. Within the text, we evaluate all these popular culture examples by using the mentioned parameters to describe what the seduction is.

Postmodern Cinema of Seduction

If there is one phrase that has been used most often by Western audiences for popular Indian cinema, it is the phrase “musicals.” The description gestures both at the fixation of Indian cinema on an earlier stage of cinematic evolution and the simple and uncomplicated pleasure derived by the audience from popular Hindi films that have an audience all over the world. This essay examines Hindi film “song and dance” spectacles as the art of deferment in the postmodern cinema of seduction, a notion derived from the work of Jean Baudrillard and the insights of Freud-Lacan-Zizek and Baudrillard himself on deferral and seduction. This chapter makes this claim not as an overarching theoretical nomenclature for all song and dance sequences in Hindi films. Instead the author argues for the primacy of the art of deferment and play in a postmodern cinema of seduction within the limited scope of her reading of a North Indian subaltern/folk-inspired song and dance Hindi film, Amol Palekar and Sandhya Gokhale directed Paheli (Riddle, 2005).

Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction

In cinema, the most prevalent representation of the figure of the seductress has been the femme fatale or the “vamp”. This chapter will explore the femme fatale in various incarnations in American cinema throughout its history. This chapter will also overview several definitions of femme fatale, and its connection with sex, seduction and destruction, in cinema's history, principally the American silent film's “vamp”, personified by the actress Theda Bara; and the 1940s filmnoir's femme fatale, personified by actresses such as Rita Hayworth and Barbara Stanwyck. In an attempt to trace a connection between different embodiments of the femme fatale in American cinema, this chapter will focus, in particular, on David Fincher's cinematic adaptation of the pulp fiction novel Gone Girl (2012), by Gillian Flynn. Not only does Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) offer one of the most recent interpretations of the traditional film noir trope, it also provides a modern update of the femme fatale.

The Seduction of Science

This chapter aims to give an account of paradigmatic science as retold through Jean Baudrillard's concept of ‘seduction'. Using concepts developed by Thomas Kuhn and Jean Baudrillard it will be argued that ‘seduction' as understood by Baudrillard can be found at varying levels of the scientific enterprise. The two main features of Baudrillard's seduction are ‘ambiguity and ‘reversibility', where we cannot be sure who is seducing who (ambiguity), where each seeks to become the other (reversibility), but in doing so only highlights their differences. In terms of Kuhn's work the more the paradigm seeks to become identical with the world, the more it begins to collapse under the weight of its own anomalies and stand out from the world. Yet when a paradigm is at its height we cannot be sure whether ‘nature' looks the way it does because the paradigm demands it or that nature is leading science to postulate said paradigm? These themes will be examined at the metaphysical, psychological and social levels of science.

Seduction, Rationality, and Willpower

This chapter starts by providing a definition and a basic taxonomy of actions of seduction, and clarifies some links between seduction and manipulation. It then considers Eric Cave's (2009, 2014) thesis that actions of seduction are problematic if they alter motives by hampering rational capacities, in particular when they lack transparency. The chapter challenges this view by arguing that there are no intrinsically rational cognitive capacities, and that the non-transparency of some triggers of attraction may actually be valuable. Therefore, the ethical focus should not be on supposedly rational capacities, but rather on willpower capacities: a seduction process that would deplete such capacities would be seriously problematic. Such a depletion should however be distinguished from other seduction strategies that aim at increasing or decreasing various desires without impairing willpower capacities. The chapter concludes by proposing a general framework for evaluating the morality of an action of seduction.

Scepticism and Seduction

This is the course we intend to follow: to put together the specific features of sceptical seduction and see the means it employs as well as, when possible, pointing out the changes in direction made by the sceptical tradition. At the same time, we believe that this kind of seduction can have possible political implications when it is compared with the immorality caused by dogmatic seduction. By this is meant that we seek to show that the kind of seduction exercised by sceptics appears to us to be better than that practised by dogmatists, especially with regard to its effects on political life. Setting out from the factors outlined here, we seek to show that the kind of seduction practised by dogmatists tends to lack any sense of responsibility towards the seduced through the protection granted to the seducer who is regarded as better or even superior in the way that the cruelty of the seduction is concealed. It seems to us that the seduction practised by the sceptic maintains an explicit form of cruelty and thus does not bring about the effects of immorality on people's lives.

Rhetoric of Seduction

Contemporary Western and industrialized societies have a profusion of messages with seductive and appealing meanings. Signs and images are used in advertising. They surround us to our consumption, satisfaction, pleasure, comfort, happiness, or social success. Their meanings comprise epidictic and apodictic messages of seduction. This chapter is about techniques of persuasion and effective communication through signs and images of advertising. Following a reflexive methodology, based on a theoretical research, the main objective is to understand how these techniques are more and more improved and able to develop new visual and popular forms of life, demonstrating that seduction is all about signs and images, i.e. it is a semiosis process of being able to send messages and read them accordingly.